It's that time of year again. Bright-eyed fourth years have begun wandering our hospital in uncomfortable shoes and fancy suits. They look equal parts nervous and excited, ready to embark on the insane adventure that is being an intern. But first, they have to survive interview season and Match Day: a stressful, expensive, hoop-jumping endeavor that culminates with an envelope containing the result of eight years of hard work. Wouldn't ...

In a New York Times column, Thomas Friedman recent wrote about what Google values and seeks in its new employees. Striking to me was the fact that overall intelligence ranks lower on their values totem pole than several traditionally more important attributes.
So, what can medicine learn from Google and how can we apply it to our admissions process? Here are five key points from the article, adapted to our admissions process:
1. ...

There's no arguing the fact that evidence-based medicine (EBM) is moving us in the right direction as far as treating and preventing illness in medicine as a whole, but what does EBM, in its current interpretation, mean for medicine as an individualized art?
Everything new or controversial in medicine seems to have a swinging pendulum. From vaccines to hormonal treatment to alternative therapies, the pendulums of medicine seem to be in ...

I recently tweeted asking about favorite patients, physicians, and students on Twitter and was met with a plethora of shocked tweets at my inclusion of patients as potential Twitter interests.
Perhaps other medical friends interpreted this as being similar to meeting people in clinic and asking for their Twitter handle (which is not something I do) or maybe people really think it’s wrong to follow patients on Twitter, I don’t know. However, I do ...

As Match Day for the Class of 2012 quickly fades into the background and residency applications for my class begin to appear on the horizon, I find my classmates starting to disappear from Facebook and other socially-oriented websites.
"Are you taking your blog down for application and interview season?" someone innocently asked, "I mean, some program directors just may not appreciate the social media involvement as much as you do."
The question, ...

In the course of our work as doctors we will undoubtedly witness events that change lives, but coming into medical school I never realized how directly some of these events would change my life.
Often in medicine we see people at the worst possible time. Patients are sick or grieving and rarely happy to be in our presence, no matter how great we might think we are. Usually, they are experiencing ...